"Aver" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ever anything was, is that "something better:" for it is so extraordinary, that we cannot say, it is too long or too short, or deny but that it is both. I think I abstract myself from all manner of prejudice when I aver that no man, though without any obligation to Mr. ADDISON, would have represented him in his family and in his friendships, or his personal character, so disadvantageously as his Secretary (in preference of whom, he incurred the warmest resentments ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... apology for having troubled a lady with so many observations on a subject so unsuitable to the softness of the fair sex; but I know you cannot be indifferent to any thing that so nearly affects the interests of humanity, which I can safely aver have alone suggested every thing which has been said by, Madam, Your very ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... earnest patriotism sometimes arouses in the soldier's breast what might seem to be a fiendish desire to witness the slaughter of his country's enemies. Only a soldier of fortune or a hireling can be a stranger to such feelings. Yet I aver that I had not the slightest feeling of personal enmity toward my old friend and classmate General Hood, or his comrades. It was the "accursed politicians" who had led them into such a fratricidal strife who ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... trinkets,—was the wife of a chief. As soon as she discovered signs of returning consciousness, she presented me with a gourd, the contents of which appeared to be Indian meal mixed with water; she first drank, and then gave it to me, and I can safely aver that I never drank any beverage, before or since, which ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... in this strain, with her usual vehemence and mighty oaths, did the great queen aver, and the republican envoy, to whom she was on this occasion very gracious, was fain to believe in her sincerity. Yet the remembrance of the amazing negotiations between the queen's ministers and the agents of Alexander Farnese, by which the invasion ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... have always told you the truth, even when my honour and character were at stake, I expect you will believe me now, when I say a word in my own favour. That I felt gratitude to God for my deliverance and safe return, I do most solemnly aver; my heart was ready to burst with the escape of this feeling, which I suppressed from a false sense of shame, though I never was given much to the melting mood; moreover, I was too proud to show what I thought a weakness, before the great he-fellows of footmen. Had we been in private, I could ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... ludicrous incident comes in at the end like a false note. Such correspondence might be so arranged separately as to make an interesting narrative of travel, but when judged by a high literary or intellectual criterion of letter-writing it is out of court. It is not too much to aver that most, if not all, of these letters might have been written by any refined and cultivated Englishman, whose education and social training had given him correct tastes and a many-sided interest ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... from Japan. What a man he is! what a history! what an illustration—his life—of the capacities of that American individuality common to us all. Cynical critics are wondering "what the people can see in Grant" to make such a hubbub about. They aver (and it is no doubt true) that he has hardly the average of our day's literary and scholastic culture, and absolutely no pronounc'd genius or conventional eminence of any sort. Correct: but he proves how an average western farmer, mechanic, boatman, carried ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... whole Elia is the quintessence of modern essay-writing from Addison to Stevenson. There are probably no better works of the same kind in our literature. Some critics aver that there are ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... his neighbor's intentions otherwise than as they are evidently expressed by words, or signified by overt actions, is a slanderer; because he pretendeth to know, and dareth to aver, that which he nowise possibly can tell whether it be true; because the heart is exempt from all jurisdiction here, is only subject to the government and trial of another world; because no man can judge concerning the truth of such accusations, because ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... Rzewuska, my aunt's eldest sister, and the eldest of the whole family, is the Madame Cherkowitsch of Balzac's letters, and not Shikoff, as the family sketch says. It is equally ridiculous to say that some people aver she was married four times, and had General Witte for a husband; but Witte was a great admirer of hers at the time she was Mme. Sobanska. There is also a detail connected with her which is very little known, and that is that she nearly married Sainte-Beauve, ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... think you, do the physicians lie, when they aver things good for sicknesses, which afterwards send Charon a great number of souls drowned in a potion before they come to his ferry? And no less of the rest, which take upon them to affirm. Now, for the poet, he nothing affirms, and therefore ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... him to aver on oath that what Eady's store could not produce would never be found at the widow Homan's; but Ethan, heedless of this boast, had already climbed to the sledge and was driving on to the rival establishment. Here, after considerable ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton
... Holy Land, and fill the area of the Campo Santo with that sacred soil! The old house stood upon about as perverse a little patch of the planet as ever harbored a half-starved earth-worm. It was as sandy as Sahara and as thirsty as Tantalus. The rustic aid-de-camps of the household used to aver that all fertilizing matters "leached" through it. I tried to disprove their assertion by gorging it with the best of terrestrial nourishment, until I became convinced that I was feeding the tea-plants ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... a trance speaker, I became widely known; and now aver that during the entire eight years of my mediumship, I firmly and sacredly confess that I had not the control of my own mind, as I now have, one twentieth of the time; and before man and high heaven I most solemnly declare that I do not now believe that during the whole eight years, ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... of the said letter, that is, on the 2d March, the ministers aforesaid did aver, that they were not able to obtain cash, in lieu of the jewels and other effects, but that, if the goods were sold, and they released from their confinement, and permitted (as they have before requested) to go abroad among their friends, they could soon make good the deficiency; ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... court had authority, under the Constitution, to hear and determine the case. And if the plaintiff claims a right to sue in a Circuit Court of the United States, under that provision of the Constitution which gives jurisdiction in controversies between citizens of different States, he must distinctly aver in his pleading that they are citizens of different States; and he cannot maintain his suit without showing that fact in ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard
... the back sthairs and listens by the library dure. All quiet as a lamb. Thin, bold loike, I shteps into the room, and nearly drops wid the shcare I have on me in a minute. The room was dark as a b'aver hat, sorr, but in different shpots ranged round in the chairs was six little red balls ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... the moment, but recalls it on the night before they start together. 'A. is such a thoroughly practical fellow; he has committed many follies, and not a few crimes, but he can lay his hand on the place where his heart should be, and honestly aver that he has never given sixpence to anybody.' Full of misgivings, and with demonstrations of satisfaction that are in themselves suspicious, they meet at the terminus. A. has a little black bag, which contains his all; it frees him from all trouble about luggage, and (especially) from the necessity ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... son of Malise MacKim, whatever thy mother may aver," cried the Earl. "I'll wager a gold angel thou art going to say something shrewdly unpleasant. That great lurdain, thy father, never asks permission to speak save when he has stilettos rankling where his honest tongue ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... excepted. Some few embellishments must be allowed to every historian; for we are not to conceive that the speeches in Livy, Sallust, or Thucydides, were literally spoken in the very words in which we now read them. It is sufficient that every fact hath its foundation in truth, as I do seriously aver is the ease in the ensuing pages; and when it is so, a good critic will be so far from denying all kind of ornament of style or diction, or even of circumstance, to his author, that he would be rather sorry if he omitted it; for he could hence derive no other ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding
... till we have to beg him to be quiet and not to talk so much. He had the flower-girl in by his bedside yesterday, and it was quite impossible to help laughing, so many Florentine airs did he show off. 'Per Bacco, ho una fame terribile, e non voglio aver piu pazienza con questo Dottore.' The ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... shorn of his strength, an eagle robbed of his freedom, or a dove bereft of his mate, all die, it is said, of a broken heart; and who will aver that this grim bandit could bear the threefold brunt, heart-whole? This only I know, that when the morning dawned, he was lying there still in his position of calm repose, but his spirit was gone-the ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... aver, I love thee, being yet unkind? How is it thou dost minister Unto my heart with treacherous mind, Thou ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... feature upon certain funeral urns which are said to date back to the period in question. And it is noteworthy that both it and the solar wheel occur upon several of the earliest British coins; which whether issued as some say before, or as others aver after, the advent of Julius Caesar, were admittedly of pre-Christian date. Evidences of the veneration of the cross in France before our era are so numerous and easily ascertainable, that it will only be necessary to refer the reader to the Collection Roujou, ...
— The Non-Christian Cross - An Enquiry Into the Origin and History of the Symbol Eventually Adopted as That of Our Religion • John Denham Parsons
... attractive. A land, however, or any department of it, whatever may be its other advantages, is most to be valued in respect of the intelligence or worth of its inhabitants. And if so, then I am proud to aver that in Fife I came to possess many intelligent and excellent friends. Many of these have gone to another land—'the land o' the leal,' leaving the places which now know them no more, the more regretfully endeared to recollection. Of those ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Dachshund is not very clear. Some writers have professed to trace the breed or representations of it on the monuments of the Egyptians. Some aver that it is a direct descendant of the French Basset-hound, and others that he is related to the old Turnspits—the dogs so excellent in kitchen service, of whom Dr. Caius wrote that "when any meat is to be roasted they go into a wheel, ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... ambitious designs (forgive the expression) of your Government; and what but self immolation would it be to abstain from the only means by which we can hope to save these threatened Provinces? Colonel D'Egville has just said that, with the Indians opposed to us, Canada would fall. I go farther, and aver that, without the aid of the Indians, circumstanced as England now is, Canada must be lost to us. It is a painful alternative I admit, for that a war, which is not carried on with the conventional courtesies of civilized belligerent nations, ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... said: "If you had heard me yestereve, I'm sure, my friend, You would say I am a champion who knows how to defend." And she left me with a feeling—most unpleasant, I aver— That the whole world would despise me if it ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... thy throne an innumerable throng of my fellow-mortals, let them listen to my confessions, let them blush at my depravity, let them tremble at my sufferings; let each in his turn expose with equal sincerity the failings, the wanderings of his heart, and, if he dare, aver, I was ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... much of a child. At Oxford, or in the home of Gaston Paris, or travelling around the globe, she received the foundation for the understanding sympathy which endeared her as "Petite" to her soldier boys. A critic might also aver that the steady moving forward of the action, joined to the backward progress, yet both done so surely, could not have been achieved without years of training. And in this respect the narrative is little short of being a tour de force. But, as a matter of fact. Miss Noyes dreamed ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... the stick down with stinging force on his wrist. With a howl of pain he let go and advanced toward Cora, but she struck him aver the head with her weapon, and Ida, who had recovered her courage, catching up a heavy stone, made it a more even battle. With a muttered snarl Lem slunk away and disappeared in the underbrush. Cora felt herself trembling violently, but she ...
— The Motor Girls • Margaret Penrose
... entitled to particular respect as they could have come only by inspiration. Being uttered before it was possible for the propounders to have formed a judgment by mere human means upon that gentleman's merits. This we can aver, that he had spoken only four lines, according to the letter press of the copy now before us, when some person on one side of us remarked that he was nothing to Mr. Chalmers, and in four lines more, another person on the other side laid him down under another actor—but one, indeed ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... there are Mohammedan races among whom monogamy, as a rule, prevails by custom, and individuals exercising their right of polygamy are looked upon with disfavor. On the other hand, we meet occasionally with men who aver that rather against their will (as they will sometimes rather amusingly say) they have been forced by custom or family influence to add by polygamy to their domestic burdens. In Mohammedan countries, ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir
... satisfaction of scaring us. Only one of our party attempted to slide down, but the moment we swore at him he came back and took his seat with folded arms alongside of us. Barrett gave the order to fire, and the bullets shrieked aver our heads, fortunately not hitting anybody. We responded with yells of derision, and the worst abuse we could ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... moment. He has no analogue in the East. True, he is a bird of the bushes, running sometimes like a little deer from one clump to another; but if you should see him mount a boulder or a bush, and hear him sing his rich, theme-like, finely modulated song, you would aver that he is closer kin to the thrushes or thrashers than to the towhees. There is not the remotest suggestion of the towhee minstrelsy in his prolonged and well-articulated melody. It would be difficult to find a finer lyrist among ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... who, inheriting inferior endowments from nature, and unpractised in the duties of civil administration, ought to be peculiarly conscious of his own deficiencies. In this conflict of emotions, all I dare aver is, that it has been my faithful study to collect my duty from a just appreciation of every circumstance by ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... believing it, that one of the great advantages of universal suffrage is, that it entrusts the direction of public affairs to men who are worthy of the public confidence. They admit that the people is unable to govern for itself, but they aver that it is always sincerely disposed to promote the welfare of the State, and that it instinctively designates those persons who are animated by the same good wishes, and who are the most fit to ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... this day, in fact, Arabic and Turkish physicians in visiting their patients on the feminine side of the family are allowed to see nothing of them except the hand, which is thrust through an opening in a curtain. How accurate their diagnoses are, based upon this slender clew, I should not like to aver, but a sharp observer might learn much ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... (roze) and the lisping sound of the c in sauce (soss). As I have not by me the ponderous and voluminous works of the poetical monarch, I may have altered some of the words of the quotation; but the rhymes sauce and rose I aver to be true to the primitive copy. Even Protestant refugees, born of French parents, brought up amongst their co-religionists and countrymen, wrote a strange gibberish, often ungrammatical, always unidiomatic, of which traces may be found even in Basnage and Ancillon. A recent ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 210, November 5, 1853 • Various
... acquainted with the merits and amiable manners of his apparent heir, he lost any desire which he might formerly have entertained, of accomplishing any change in my circumstances in relation to the world. Perhaps the old peer turned a little ashamed of his own conduct, and dared not aver to the congregation of the righteous, (for he became saintly in his latter days,) the very pretty frolics which he seems to have been guilty of in his youth. Perhaps, also, the death of my right honourable mother operated in my favour, since, while she lived, my chance was the worse—there is ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... far too sound a philosopher to be restricted by the canon laid down in his critique of Dr. Haeckel. In his recent discourse upon the plague, he asks and answers the question, 'What is the contagium?' in the following words: 'Et qu'est-ce que le contagium? A mon avis, l'analogie de la peste aver le charbon contagieux me parait si grande qu'il me semble possible de trouver un organisme microscopique qui contient le germe de l'affection. Mais jusqu' a present on a peu cherche a trouver cet organisme.'—Revue ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... honourable household on hand—and, by our Lady, he hath stuff of mine too—certain drugs sent me from the city for composition of my alexipharmics—this gear must be looked to.—Hodge," said he, addressing one of his redoubted body-guard, "do thou and Toby Telford take the mickle brown aver and the black cut-tailed mare, and make out towards the Kerry-craigs, and see what tidings you can have of Auchtermuchty and his wains—I trust it is only the medicine of the pottle-pot, (being the ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... not so! We may follow on his track, But he comes not back. And yet I dare aver He is a brave discoverer Of climes his elders do not know. He has more learning than appears On the scroll of twice three thousand years, More than in the groves is taught, Or from furthest Indies brought; He knows, ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... over the coarse grass. Flights of white cockatoos stream out, shrieking like evil souls. The sun suddenly sinks, and the mopokes burst out into horrible peals of semi-human laughter. The natives aver that, when night comes, from out the bottomless depth of some lagoon the Bunyip rises, and, in form like monstrous sea-calf, drags his loathsome length from out the ooze. From a corner of the silent forest rises a dismal chant, and around a fire dance natives ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... the name of the Creator as that expressed in the foregoing quotation. The statement that Old Man was merely light personified would be beyond his comprehension, and if he did understand what was meant, he would laugh at it, and aver that Na'pi was a real man, a flesh ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... from Christ for it, and at this time a particular calling from many, that which the honourable houses require from you at such a time, when the settlement of religion thereon, and when it is the very controversy of the times, and the civil magistrates not only call you before them to aver the truth therein, but also giveth you a good example, cometh before you out of tenderness to their civil trust and duty, to maintain the privileges of parliament; to give a testimony assentatory to their civil rights and privileges, and to forewarn you lest you break the same, ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... sad he, turning to Rhoda, with angry irony, "pray what is all this fuss about? You are a very ill used young lady, I dare aver. Pray what cruelties does Mademoiselle de Barras propose inflicting upon you, that you need to appeal thus to your ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Plain was wider than it is now. Whether it should be called a small town or a large village I cannot say. It has no mayor, and no market, but it has a fair. There rages a feud in Bullhampton touching this want of a market, as there are certain Bullhamptonites who aver that the charter giving all rights of a market to Bullhampton does exist; and that at one period in its history the market existed also,—for a year or two; but the three bakers and two butchers ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... several souls, of which one is in his body and another in an animal, such as an elephant, a wild pig, a leopard, and so forth. When a man comes home, feeling ill, and says, "I shall soon die," and dies accordingly, the people aver that one of his souls has been killed in a wild pig or a leopard and that the death of the external soul has caused the death of the soul in his body. A similar belief in the external souls of living people is entertained ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... repeat, and relate a plain story—matters of fact, d'ye see, without rhetoric, oratory, ornament, or embellishment; without repetition, tautology, circumlocution, or going about the bush; facts which I shall aver, partly on the testimony of my own knowledge, and partly from the information of responsible evidences of good repute and credit, any circumstance known to the contrary notwithstanding.—For as ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... customary privileges, and abolished all invidious distinctions between the descendants of France and those of the mother-country. So universally, too, has this system of conciliation been pursued, we believe we may with safety aver, of all the numerous colonies that have succumbed to the genius and power of England, there are none whose inhabitants entertain stronger feelings of attachment and loyalty to her than those of Canada; and whatever may be the transient differences,—differences ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... of what body, what components formed Is this same mind I will go on to tell. First, I aver, 'tis superfine, composed Of tiniest particles—that such the fact Thou canst perceive, if thou attend, from this: Nothing is seen to happen with such speed As what the mind proposes and begins; Therefore the same bestirs itself more swiftly Than aught whose nature's palpable to ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... Doctor be reminded of the case of Haman and the despised dissenting Jew, who refused to bow down to the courtiers of the king. The Doctor's wrath is kindled against those whom he calls "dissenters," and who refuse to submit to his Church rule. We have said, "whom the Doctor calls 'dissenters.'" I aver that the term is not at all applicable to the religious denominations in this country. From what Church have they dissented? Indeed most of the first inhabitants of this country never belonged to the Church of England at all. They were from the first attached to the denominations. ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... plunging his hand into his game-bag, the chasseur produces—a phthisical snipe, a wood pigeon, an extenuated quail, and perhaps something which you at first take for a deformed blackbird, but which turns out to be a water-hen. As far as our own observations go, we do aver this to be a very handsome average of a French sportsman's day's shooting. If by chance he has knocked down a red-legged partridge, (grey ones are very scarce in France,) his exultation knows no bounds. The day on which such a thing occurs is a red-letter ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... to turn up her eyes,—"I can only aver that the coincidence of sentiments is no doubt the work ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... truth when I aver, that these words of the baron gave me infinite distress, and for a moment deprived me of speech. I hardly knew what to say or do. At first I suspected that I had made some unaccountable mistake, and brought my letter to the wrong individual. H——, who was almost a Puritan in religious matters, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... British Consul at New York, that the said articles were shipped "for and on account of Her Britannic Majesty." This certificate was of no force or effect, for its indefiniteness, as decided in other cases. A claim of property must point out the owner or owners, and not aver that it belongs to the subjects of a nation generally. There must be some one designated who has a right to the possession of the property under the bill of lading. The certificate was accordingly set aside, and the ship and ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... complaints and reclamations; to insult the discoverer's young sons with shouts and jeers. There was no doubt that the colony itself, whatever the cause, had not prospered so well as might have been desired. Historians do not hesitate to aver that Columbus' over-colored and unreliable statements as to the amount of gold to be found there were the chief ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... supposed the world would immediately 348:27 witness the full fruitage of Christian Science, or that sin, disease, and death would not be believed for an indefinite time; but this I do aver, that, 348:30 as a result of teaching Christian Science, ethics and temperance have received all impulse, health has been restored, and longevity increased. If such are the pres- 349:1 ent fruits, what will the harvest be, when this Science is more ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... Those who watched him until he turned out of Main Street into Fourth, and so toward the river, aver—marvelling duly at his powers of resistance—that the head of Potts was erect, his gaze bent aloft, and his gait one of perfect directness save that he stepped ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... meet, And neither will an inch retreat. For why? they both enjoy'd the glory Of ancestors in ancient story. The one, a goat of peerless rank, Which, browsing on Sicilian bank, The Cyclop gave to Galataea; The other famous Amalthaea, The goat that suckled Jupiter, As some historians aver. For want of giving back, in troth, A common fall involved them both.— A common accident, no doubt, On ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... actually put her into a creed half-filled with wood and shavings, and hung her above a fire, setting the shavings in a blaze. Fortunately for the child and himself, she was not injured, and it is said that the gift of sorcery has been taken away from her. At all events, the intelligent neighbours aver that she is not half so witch-like in appearance since she was singed" (408. ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... is, that two lovers were swallowed up in this frightful gulf. The neighbouring peasants tell a tale of one Deville, a lover, who, through revenge, plunged his fair mistress into these waters, and afterwards followed her. How far this story may get belief, I know not; but such they aver is the truth, while they mournfully lament the sad affair.—They point out a small hole in the bank where you may hear the waters dashing with fury against the projecting rocks. This, some imagine to be the noise of infernal spirits, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 323, July 19, 1828 • Various
... we aver, to see how little the place had changed, for it seemed that we had passed round the curves and contours of a good many centuries in those four or five years. In the open meadow the cow was still grazing; perhaps the same cow that was ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... time, and a few worn-out letters may be read at the pleasure of the decipherer, Dns. Johan—de Hamel,—or Johan—de Lamel—And it is also true, that of another tomb, richly sculptured with an ornamental cross, mitre, and pastoral staff, tradition can only aver, that a certain nameless bishop lies interred there. But upon other two stones which lie beside, may still be read in rude prose, and ruder rhyme, the history of those who sleep beneath them. They belong, we are assured by the epitaph, to the class of persecuted Presbyterians ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... the author's own words and works to vouch for them in the face of day. Though a thousand of our great men may have helped a copier's weak copyist to take "some practical advantage" of the world's credulity, it is safe to aver, in the face of dignity still greater, that testimonials more fallacious have seldom mocked the cause of learning. They did not ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... Wilt thou not put the scorn And instant tragic question from thine eye? Do thy dark brows yet crave That swift and angry stave — Unmeet for this desirous morn — That I have striven, striven to evade? Gazing on him, must I not deem they err Whose careless lips in street and shop aver As common tidings, deeds to make his cheek Flush from the bronze, and his dead throat to speak? Surely some elder singer would arise, Whose harp hath leave to threaten and to mourn Above this people when they go astray. Is Whitman, the strong spirit, overworn? Has Whittier ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... my ancestors and myself, I aver, that no Dahoman ever embarked in war merely for the sake of procuring wherewithal to purchase your commodities. I, who have not been long master of this country, have without thinking of the market, killed many thousands, and I shall kill many thousands more. When ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... guesser you are, tiny minstrel," was the reply; "but you had better leave me with my diamond name, at all events for the present. I shall not say whether some scientific bird-winged philosophers are right or wrong when they aver that, though the Queen of the Morning borrowed me, I am really and truly a jewel from the crown of the Sun; that when he took off his royal robes last evening, to lay his head on his nightly pillow, I dropped out of his crown, and tumbled down to the earth. I may tell you, ...
— The Story of a Dewdrop • J. R. Macduff
... the course of the following book will serve to show his own mastery of drawing whether as respects Mechanical details, the Moon's surface, or the fairyland of Landscape. It is perhaps not saying too much to aver that had he not devoted his business life to Mechanics, he would, like his father, his brother Patrick, and his sisters, have taken a high position as an artist. In the following Memoir we have only been able to introduce a few specimens of his drawings; but ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... The scene of a popular insurrection, where the minds of a whole people were inflamed, was liable to misinterpretation. In short, the whole story of the Spartan Cleomenes was capable of being wrested to political and Jacobitic purposes; and there wanted not many to aver, that to such purposes it had been actually applied by Dryden. Neither was the state of our author such at the time as to permit his pleading his own cause. The completion of the piece having been interrupted ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... a melancholy picture of backward progress, and a family posting towards extinction. But the law (however administered, and I am bound to aver that, in Scotland "it couldna weel be waur") acts as a kind of dredge, and with dispassionate impartiality brings up into the light of day, and shows us for a moment, in the jury-box or on the gallows, the creeping things of the past. By these broken glimpses ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... see I freeze," says Truth, "And yet of those who pass I but implore A simple shelter, but I frighten them. Alas! I see an aged woman gains But small consideration!" "Younger than I," Saith Fable, "are you? Yet I may aver, Without conceit, that everywhere I am received with joy. But Mistress Truth, Why did you brave the light in such scant robe? 'Twas most ill-judged. Come, let's arrange for both, Since the same end is aim for me as you; Get 'neath my cloak, and we'll together walk. ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... the London Abyss is a vast shambles. Year by year, and decade after decade, rural England pours in a flood of vigorous strong life, that not only does not renew itself, but perishes by the third generation. Competent authorities aver that the London workman whose parents and grand-parents were born in London is so remarkable a specimen that he ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... Cook & Sons, and thus vowed to a course of perpetual travel, which leaves them no time to think of certain trifles incidental to life." The explanation, as I say, seduced me for the time being. But a more attentive examination of the bands who infest the valley of the Nile enables me to aver that all these good English ladies are of an age notoriously canonical; and the catastrophe of procreation therefore, supposing that such an accident could ever have happened to them, must date back to a time long anterior to their ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... where they visit, for they fly vice. A person would be thought impudently prophane who should suffer his family to go to bed, without having first set a tub, or pail, full of clean water, for those guests to bathe themselves in, which the natives aver they constantly do, as soon as ever the eyes of the family are closed, wherever they vouchsafe to come."—WALDREN's Works, p. 126. There are some curious, and perhaps anomalous facts, concerning the history of Fairies, ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... then handed the bottle back to his nephew, who, shaking it, ejaculated, "Why, we can't pledge you in return—there is nothing left!" to which came the waggish response, "I beg pardon; it was so dark I couldn't see"; nevertheless there was a little remaining, as I myself can aver. ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... not our purpose, however, either to affirm or dis-affirm the inspirational claims of the Bible Genesis. We simply take its language as we find it, stript of its Masoretic renderings and irrational interpretations, and unhesitatingly aver that the three Hebrew words, translated in our common version—"whose seed is in itself upon the earth" —contains, when properly rendered, the key that unlocks the whole "mystery of life," or, as Dr. Gull emphasizes it, "the grand questio vexata of the day." It expressly declares ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... Clarence used to aver that he really did see 'things' in the dark, but as he only shuddered and sobbed instead of describing them, he was punished for 'telling fibs,' though the housemaid used to speak under her breath of his being a 'Sunday child.' ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "I most solemnly aver is literally true. Hedulio and I were once riding along a woodcutters' road through the forests on the Aemilian estate, in the wildest portion of it. The road forms a part of a good short-cut from Villa Aemilia to this valley. It was hot weather and very dry. We were both ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... great Paul aver, in lucid spell, That they of conjugal intent "do well"? But hinted at a better state,—'tis one With which two loving souls have naught to do. For, in well-doing being quite content, Be there another state more excellent ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... it be? Why, man, and wilt thou doubt, Where Sylla deigns these dangers to aver? Sirrah, except not so, misdoubt not so: See here Aneparius' letters, read the lines, And say, Lucretius, that I favour thee, That darest but suspect thy general. [Read the ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... commander-in-chief was at fault in not waiting till his line was thus extended and formed, and then all bearing down together, in line abreast; although by his own contention no such issue could have been reached that day, unless the allies were obliging enough to wait. "I aver, and I shall die in this opinion, that no man that is an officer, who knows his duty, will make the signal for line abreast to steer down upon an enemy, until the fleet has been stretched and extended ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... pooh-poohs all stories of massacres. It is generally the dregs of the Chinese population who are recruited for labour gangs abroad; and if "removals" of "counter-revolutionaries" can be accomplished by Chinese battalions, the Bolsheviks can then aver that they have not had a hand in it! Since the acceptance of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty because Russia could fight no longer, Trotzky has not only talked of raising Bolshevik armies, but has succeeded in raising them and officering them by officers ...
— Bolshevism: A Curse & Danger to the Workers • Henry William Lee
... "I aver nothing," replied Potts; "but, as a relative of a suspected witch, she will be the best witness ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Swords.—Some writers aver that Birmingham was the centre of the metal works of the ancient Britons, where the swords and the scythe blades were made to meet Julius Caesar. During the Commonwealth, over 15,000 swords were said to have been made in Birmingham for the Parliamentary ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... were apt to curl in an ironical smile; his hands were of perfect beauty, his feet of dainty smallness, and he showed with an affectation of complaisance a well-turned leg above his ample boots, the turned down tops of which, garnished with lace, fell in irregular folds aver his ankles in the latest fashion. He did not appear to be more than eighteen years of age, and nature had denied his charming face the distinctive sign of his sex for not the slightest down was visible on his chin, though a little delicate pencilling darkened his upper lip: His slightly effeminate ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... and when they turned into an inn, she ministered to them herself, and washed and kissed their feet, and then lay down with them to sleep, after the simple fashion of those days. But a holy awe of her, as of some saint and goddess, fell on the wild seafarer; and he never, so he used to aver, treated her for a moment save as a sister. Never did either ask the other who they were, and whence they came; and Godric reported (but this was long after the event) that no one of the company of pilgrims could see that fair maid, save he and ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... poent representement, Mes qe ceo seit chastement En office de seint eglise Quant hom fet la Deu servise, Cum Jesu Crist le fiz Dee En sepulcre esteit pose, Et la resurrectiun Pur plus aver devociun. ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... and, indeed, sir, under the circumstances, decency forbids their use. But if I were permitted to read them, and show their worse than damning influence upon society, in conjunction with this system of separate interests, I venture to aver that gentlemen would turn from them with disgust; aye, sir, they would shun them as they would shun man's worst enemy, and flee from them as from a poisonous reptile. (Page 1161, "Debates ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... on with his toilet, musing, the while, upon the probability of his ever getting to be as old as Uncle "Afrikin Tommy," who was the patriarch of the plantation, and popularly supposed to be "cluss onto" two hundred years of age; and who was wont to aver that when he arrived in that part of the country, when he was a boy, the squirrels all had two tails apiece, and the Mississippi River was such a small stream that people bridged it, on occasion, with a fence-rail. Thus meditating upon the glorious ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... dominated me so completely that I did not think at all of domination. But all I know is, that I seemed suddenly to have found an unexpected and hitherto unimagined self. I leapt in transport to encounter a majestic Me; and in this impulse I can honestly aver that there was no tinge of vanity. I should say, rather, that it sprang from the utter humility of the disciple who instantly, absolutely, and unquestionably accepted the master's word. Be these things as they may, the Carlylean gospel came to me, not as a revelation of another's mind, but as ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... with a strange air of seriousness over all her face, only belied by a laughing gleam in her dark eyes, she would aver that the spectre (who had been an artist in his mortal lifetime) had promised to teach her a long-lost, but invaluable secret of old Roman fresco painting. The knowledge of this process would place Miriam at the head of modern art; the sole condition being agreed upon, that she should ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the A.D.C. is subdued. He stands in doorways and strokes his moustache. He nods sadly to you as you pass. He is preoccupied with—himself, [some suppose; others aver his office.] He has a motherly whisper for Secretaries and Members of Council. His way with ladies is sisterly—undemonstratively affectionate. He tows up rajas to H.E., and stands in the offing. His attitude towards rajas is one of melancholy reserve. He ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... army] for two misfortunes which happened in a very short time, one after the other, notwithstanding of the court-marshall's recommending me to the General, his Grace the Duke of Marlborough's mercy, which was always looked on as equal to a pardon, and which I can aver was never refused to any one but myself. Nor was his allowing me to serve at the sieges of Lisle and Ghent precedented on my giving my word of honour to return to arrest after these sieges were over, which I did and continued (prisoner) till his Grace the ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... going on—this time attended by swarms of peddlers vending old clothes and all sorts of small wares, bread-cartmen, and tea-vendors. These latter aver that it is easier to sell tea in the "congested" districts at 4s. 6d. than at 2s. 6d. The people have no test of ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... The Devil, I safely can aver, Has neither hoof, nor tail, nor sting; Nor is he, as some sages swear, A spirit, neither here nor there, In nothing—yet ...
— Peter Bell the Third • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... and declare that they are mere non-essential circumstances, and that a man may reach the same end by studying himself in himself. It is as if a man should use a ladder to reach a lofty crag, and then kick it over contemptuously, and aver that he could just as well have flown up, and ask the crowd below to break up that miserable ladder and try their wings. Doubtless they have wings, if they only knew it. But seriously, I am not inclined ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... instant a more ominous sound, as of galloping horses in the path before us. The moonlight outside the woods gave that dimness of atmosphere within which is more bewildering than darkness, because the eyes cannot adapt themselves to it so well. Yet I fancied, and others aver, that they saw the leader of an approaching party, mounted on a white horse and reining up in the pathway; others, again, declare that he drew a pistol from the holster and took aim; others heard the words, "Charge in upon them! ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... where the great Nile stream issues, there is only one feeder of any importance, and that is the Kitangule river; whilst from the southernmost point, round by the east, to the strait, there are no rivers at all of any importance; for the travelled Arabs one and all aver, that from the west of the snow-clad Kilimandjaro to the lake where it is cut by the second degree, and also the first degree of south latitude, there are salt lakes and salt plains, and the country is hilly, ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... height of the nettings, a snow wall five or six feet thick, which soon froze as hard as a rock. This envelope did not allow the interior heat to escape outside. A canvas tent, covered with skins and hermetically closed, was stretched aver the whole length of the deck, and formed a sort of walk for ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... however, so the chroniclers aver, though outwardly impassive, was evidently deeply moved. He had very expressive eyes, clear mirrors of the fine, upright soul within, and in them there was a look of intense emotion as he watched the crowd, which he had so often dominated and controlled, now turning ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... dangerous person. Opposite him, but behind the clock (Coward!), stands the other fellow, similarly armed. Most people imagine that the two are fighting for the hand of the lady on the clock, and they aver that they can hear her heart beating with the excitement of it; but, to let you into the secret, the other fellow doesn't come into the story at all. Only Margery and I know the true story. I think I told it to her one night when she wouldn't go to sleep—or ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... melancholy picture of backward progress, and a family posting towards extinction. But the law (however administered, and I am bound to aver that, in Scotland, 'it couldna weel be waur') acts as a kind of dredge, and with dispassionate impartiality brings up into the light of day, and shows us for a moment, in the jury-box or on the gallows, the creeping things of the past. ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... still apply the old French term "aver," averium, in Guernsey, to the hog or pig; in Jersey, to a child. In France "aver" denoted the animal produce or stock on a farm; and there were "averia lanata" likewise. Similar apparently whimsical adaptations of words will not shock those who are aware that "pig" in England ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 58, December 7, 1850 • Various
... the virtues of mankind, and approaches to a superior nature. That is the principle I maintain, and which the chairman of the committee has to refute, if he applies the position he has taken to the mothers, the sisters, and the daughters, of the men of my district who voted to send me here. Now, I aver further, that, in the instance to which his observation refers, namely, in the act of petitioning against the annexation of Texas to this Union, the motive was pure, the means appropriate, and the purpose virtuous, in the highest degree. As an evident proof of this, I recur to the particular ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy |
